What Are Little Boys Made Of?

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

David Benkof: Behind the Mask

At first glance, David Benkof appears to be a young gay man who believes that same-sex marriage will damage the institution of marriage, that there are better options for gay couples than marriage, that the community should join him in prioritizing other more pressing issues, and that the marriage discussion is harming the efforts of gay couples in red states to get recognition for their unions. He also claims that he’s a gay columnist, that he speaks for an influential collection of gay thinkers, and that he is part of the gay and lesbian community and that he shares our goals and dreams. But none of that is true.

“Repeat After Me”: The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber

The April 2008 edition of the pay-to-publish vanity journal Psychological Reports featured a new report from NARTH. Written by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard W. Potts, the report carries the unwieldy but self-descriptive title, “Clients perceptions of how reorientation therapy and self-help can promote changes in sexual orientation.” While the title describes what the authors meant to show — how clients describe the benefits of reparative therapy — the report itself actually illustrates something very different: the ex-gay movement’s remarkable ability to instill an almost robot-like parroting of ex-gay rhetoric among their clients.

Testing the Premise: Is MRSA The New Gay Plague?

The Toronto Star said that a new study “discover[ed] a new strain” of a super-bug “hitting gay men.” Headlines in Britain screamed, “Flesh-eating bug strikes San Francisco’s gay community,” and anti-gay extremists across America spread the alarm that gays were introducing another plague into “the general population.” But there was a small problem with all of this: None of it is true!

Paul Cameron’s World

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths

At last, the truth can now be told.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

Review: The Gay Report

When Karla Jay and Allan Young published The Gay Report in 1979, it quickly a favorite source of statistics for many anti-gay extremists. But before you accepts these statistic at face value, you should examine the inner workings of this survey very carefully. What you learn might surprise you.

Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.

Sunday Driver: Thoughts on Getting Married

Gabriel Arana

September 6th, 2009

As I write this, my partner Michael and I are on vacation in Winter Park, Colorado. One of my closest friends from New York City is getting married and we’ve flown in a few days before the wedding. It’s been a year since either of us has had any real time off, and despite the fact that I haven’t been able to stop myself from checking my work e-mail, it’s been a nice break.

The wedding on Sunday will be the first I’ve attended since Mike and I got engaged a few months ago, which has made me look at all the events with an eye toward our own ceremony. I take note of what I think would fit and what wouldn’t. Many of the rituals don’t — my dad, for instance, is not giving me away. So we’ve had to make up a lot as we’ve gone along; I think that suits us.

Me (left) and Mike at Niagara Falls

We planned the proposal together, chose matching Tiffany wedding bands and bought them, decided to go to Mario Batali’s Del Posto for dinner. As we walked over to the West Side for dinner, we stopped at Madison Square Park. We sat on a bench, and as people walked by with their dogs and children, we exchanged the rings in a place we had been many times before.

For a number of reasons, I never thought I’d get married. My experiences in reorientation therapy with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi had convinced me at a young age that being gay would mean being alone — gay relationships didn’t last. I believed that long after I gave up on therapy. But even after I disabused myself of that toxic notion, I had never met anyone I thought I could be with indefinitely.

I met Mike at a party and was dating someone else at the time. After we friended each other on Facebook, I asked him to dinner, which I knew was playing with fire. I told myself that it was just a friendly meeting, but none of my friends failed to point out that I was not telling my partner at the time. I said I did not want to upset him unnecessarily, but even I didn’t fully buy my own story. Shortly after we had dinner, my ex and I broke up, for a number of reasons, and Mike and I were dating within a few weeks.

Visiting my parents in Arizona

We’ve been together for nearly two years and decided to get engaged before I left New York to work at the Prospect in Washington, DC. The thought of getting married still scares me. Walking down Fifth Avenue after having bought the ring, I remember thinking, “This isn’t just talk anymore.” It was a serious, adult thing to do, and it made me a bit nostalgic for single life, which was lonely but always infused with a sense of possibility. When I first moved to New York, I knew no one and spent much of my free time wandering the city alone, walking home from work in the World Financial Center, or back and forth across the island, or in the park. Sometimes I miss that solitude, but I forget why I miss it when Mike is off in Boston from Monday to Thursday for work.

Marriage also scares me less when I think of the fact that I can still be myself in it; I don’t have to do any last-minute repairs to make myself “ready.” And it doesn’t mean everything will be perfect. In a way, it won’t change anything. Mike and I will still love each other, still share our thoughts and feelings. We’ll fight, too. The fact that it won’t change much in our day-to-day begs the question, Why get married? We would still be together even if Connecticut and Massachusetts were not a train ride away, and even if both DC and New York did not recognized gay marriage. But our relationship doesn’t exist in a vacuum; we share it with our friends, co-workers and, in my case, I share it with readers. It is as much a public partnership as a private relationship, which is why having it acknowledged from the outside is important.

This morning, Mike and I drove into downtown Winter Park (if you can call it that) and had brunch outside. I rarely remember the things we talk about, but I do hold on to the profound feeling of well-being, and remember how the midday light shone off the glass table. It’s then when I think marriage won’t change a thing. But when I’m at a social event and someone asks me about the ring, or when I have to take a flight on my own and worry about who will take care of him if the plane goes down, I realize: maybe marriage does change everything.

Richard W. Fitch

RebLaw

Congratulations! My sweetie and I just got married about a month ago. We pretty much knew from pretty early in the relationship that it was only a matter of time.
:-) I wish you all the happiness in the world!

Lucrece

This is so beautiful. I actually teared up a little. I am so glad you could prove the lie in Dr. Nicolosi’s “advice”.

One thing I loved about marrying my wife is that we could make up our own script with absolutely no advice. (As a 50/50 bi woman and feminist, I disliked some aspects of the “traditional” mixed-gender wedding, and knew I’d end up having to defend some choices I’d have made in that situation.) But I also feel like this generation of same-sex couples is setting precedent for the next. It’s an amazing thing.

Regan DuCasse

I remember how long it was before I got married. Before that, I hadn’t really ever been in a long term relationship and mostly I didn’t think I’d marry either.

Sometimes you put yourself in the mind that you don’t want what you can’t have.
Not hoping, nor taking it for granted you can, changes the outlook on finding someone who is right for us.
How we see our worth in doing so.

I’m in that sort of minority that has been relegated to the margins of solitary survival. Even in motherhood, black women are a kind of abandoned group who struggle more professionally, therefore economically, therefore who have been burdened with the stereotype of overbearing and too strong.

We don’t want to be, but we are left with circumstances that require a vigilance and determination few understand.
I know what it’s like to struggle to want to have that person with you who cares to know and understand you and be steadfast.
In the best of times for many people, it takes many tries, hits and misses to have that.
It’s hard to stay together, harder to know what life will throw your way and the older you get, the prospects diminish it seems.

And if you’re in a minority, constantly bombarded with things that keep you diasporic and struggling for basic dignity, the idea that there is someone out there for you is even more daunting.

This is why, when someone like you Gabriel, is fortunate enough to have done just that. To feel loved, and give love, THAT is the gift beyond the price of pearls.
Yes, marriage changes everything because of what society charges you to appreciate. When you hear those vows, the sheer grandness of their intention, the beauty of their purpose is everything.
It’s everything that is the best of your possibility with Michael.
The more you repeat them to yourselves and each other throughout your years together, it will bring you back to why you are there in the first place.

Love is ALWAYS worth celebrating because it’s so rare, so is happiness. So is learning about what you’re capable of when it matters the most.
Life and everything that’s good is so fragile and precious.
Go on, go ON and show them your caring, married and joyful life. Show us something to hope and live for.
Make it beautiful and real, make it change you into the deeply committed married person you are now becoming.

Yes, marriage changes everything because it SHOULD.

Much love and hopes for the best you can have together, Gabriel and Michael.
XOXO

Burr

Just speaking for myself, I’ve generally considered marriage in mostly a pragmatic way of securing our rights to care for each other. And if the government allowed a way to do it without that, and without spending hundreds of dollars on legalese that could still get ignored and shredded up, I would go for that, though I still think everyone should have the right to get married and have it recognized. I’m already “married” in my heart to my partner, and don’t necessarily need a public showing to prove it.

This post has me reconsidering that a little, though..

Priya Lynn

Matt

Congratulations. That was a wonderful meditation. Marriage really is more than just an acquisition of rights. I think you’ve illustrated it well without coming out and saying it, but social conservatives are right. Marriage is transformative; it actually changes people in how they see themselves as being part of something larger and yet still all their own.

Congratulations to the you and Mike. You make an adorable couple.

Alan

Jim that was a great post, and I’m truly glad that you’ve found someone you’re happy with. Thanks for sharing that with us, and I wish you the best on your wedding day.

But a word of warning: Be careful about agreeing with social conservatives. They don’t just see marriage as transformative, they see it as a requirement for everyone. Another example of their intolerance that I hope you don’t share.

Matt

Your honesty in telling about the end of one relationship and the beginning of a new one is very refreshing. Seldom does the new begin without saying good bye to what has been. Went to the Gender Odyssey conference in Seattle Washington this weekend. Comment was made which is probably a quote from someone, but don’t ask me who: We don’t know the difference between transformation and destruction. God wants to transform us and we think we’re being destroyed.

You’ve been through a lot of transformations in your life…which you have shared openly and honestly with us, giving others hope that they too may be transformed.
Rev Ray in Seattle
Metropolitan Community Church Seattlehttp://www.mccseattle.org

Gabriel Arana

Thanks so much to everyone for all the encouragement, advice, and thoughts. Your messages have been very heart-warming to read. I think some of you should post your own experiences/thoughts as part of the Sunday Driver series!

HuntTheWumpus

While I offer my congratulations, I must say that I kinda agree with Alex H on his point of bad form….That fact that a relationship started while in the midst of another is one problem that gay community need not gloss over…Again, if Mike is cool with it, more power to the both of you….and I wish you well!!

Bob

The best to both of you and all the happieness. You both look marvelous together.

Also, I know this is off topic but I wanted to tell Turtle Box Bulletin how much your efforts of reporting about gay issues
around the world is GREATLY appreciated. Those of us with extremely busy
schedules are kept up to date on events that effect all of us.

Thank you so much, keep up the great reporting!

Best regards,

Bob
San Diego CA

kadrian Whisenhunt

Congratulations. I’ve been wearing my wedding ring since Kent put it on my finger last November (the California Supreme Court says we still get to call ourselves legally married – nifty!) and it gives me a feeling of reassurance and warmth when K & I are apart.

As we’d been together 14 years neither K nor I thought a ceremony would make any difference, really; we just wanted more legal security in case of, you know, bad stuff. But the good stuff has been more significant so far – the support of family & friends, the connection between us explicitly affirmed by them – and by us! It does seem weird, sometimes, but so do a lot of things when you think about them – from religion to cats.

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